789. To His Dear Valentine, Mistress Margaret Falconbridge
Now is your turn, my dearest, to be setA gem in this eternal coronet:'Twas rich before, but since your name is downIt sparkles now like Ariadne's crown.Blaze by this sphere for ever: or this do,Let me and it shine evermore by you.
Words in this poem
- evermore adv.
- During eternity; always; forever; for an indefinite period; at all times; -- often used substantively with for.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
789. To His Dear Valentine, Mistress Margaret Falconbridge is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2, Project Gutenberg ebook #22421; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Robert Herrick, 789. To His Dear Valentine, Mistress Margaret Falconbridge, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/789-to-his-dear-valentine-mistress-margaret-falconbridge.html, id L05730.
Form and metre
789. To His Dear Valentine, Mistress Margaret Falconbridge is 6 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 88%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.0 syllables.
See other poems in heroic couplets, other poems in iambic pentameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 AABBCC setA · coronetA · downB · crownB · doC · youC
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Now is your turn, my dearest, to be set | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| A gem in this eternal coronet: | 10 | ····˘/˘/˘/ |
| 'Twas rich before, but since your name is down | 10 | ·········· |
| It sparkles now like Ariadne's crown. | 10 | ·/˘···˘/˘· |
| Blaze by this sphere for ever: or this do, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Let me and it shine evermore by you. | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.